a Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway , University of London , Egham , UK.
Laterality. 2013;18(6):748-66. doi: 10.1080/1357650X.2013.772620. Epub 2013 Mar 7.
It is now relatively well established that the right hemisphere is specialised for processing facial emotion; however, there is variability in this pattern of lateralisation. One factor that has been examined is atypical lateralisation in individuals diagnosed with clinical psychological conditions. To date the evidence regarding the neuropsychological processing of emotional stimuli in individuals with depression is contradictory. In this study 160 participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory and the chimeric faces test, a test of lateralisation for the processing of facial expressions of each of the six basic emotions. A negative relationship between depression and lateralisation was found for females only, showing that women with higher depression scores tend to be less strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere, or even lateralised to the left hemisphere, for processing facial emotion. The strength of this relationship also varied across the different emotions with the clearest results for the processing of anger, disgust, and fear. There were no significant findings for males. The possible reasons for there being a sex difference in our findings and an attempt to reconcile the disparate findings within this area of research are discussed.
现在已经相对确定右半球专门用于处理面部情绪；然而，这种侧化模式存在变异性。一个已经被研究过的因素是在被诊断为临床心理疾病的个体中出现的非典型侧化。迄今为止，关于抑郁症个体对情绪刺激的神经心理学处理的证据是相互矛盾的。在这项研究中，160 名参与者完成了贝克抑郁量表和嵌合面孔测试，这是一种用于测试处理六种基本情绪的面部表情的侧化的测试。仅在女性中发现抑郁和侧化之间存在负相关，这表明抑郁得分较高的女性更倾向于不对右半球进行强烈的侧化，甚至对左半球进行侧化，以处理面部情绪。这种关系的强度也因不同的情绪而不同，在处理愤怒、厌恶和恐惧时效果最为明显。对于男性则没有显著的发现。讨论了在我们的研究结果中存在性别差异的可能原因，以及试图调和这一研究领域内的不同发现。
